The Anger Fallacy: Uncovering the Irrationality of the Angry Mindset

Front Cover
Australian Academic Press, Dec 30, 2013 - Self-Help - 256 pages

A life without anger is attainable — if you understand The Anger Fallacy.

Anger is everywhere — behind everything from road rage to wrap rage, domestic violence to international conflicts. People cling to their anger, as a tool of influence and a driver of revenge. But is anger really ever useful? And can we learn to overcome it?

In this entertaining and ground-breaking book, two of Australia’s leading clinical psychologists take a radical approach to anger management, exploding the irrational beliefs that fuel this noxious and misunderstood emotion. Through numerous examples from popular culture and the consulting room, and with a sizable dose of humour, the authors show how to combat anger by substituting empathy and understanding for righteous angry judgments. Along the way, readers will learn a new way of viewing people and their actions that is at once powerful and serene.

 

Contents

Anger is everywhere
1
But anger gets results
33
But anger motivates me
63
But anger is part of my image
99
The cognitive basis of anger
115
What are really angry about?
127
Get your facts straight
143
The arbitrariness of shoulds
155
Seeing the machine
175
The empathy solution
203
Getting past unfairness
217
Recap and conclusion
247
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About the author (2013)

 Steven Laurent is a clinical psychologist with extensive experience in treating psychiatric disorders. He is a regular guest lecturer at the University of Sydney, where he has taught on Mood Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, and Drug and Alcohol Disorders. At present he works in private practice in the Inner West of Sydney. Steven completed a Masters in Clinical Psychology at UNSW, where his thesis centred on emotion perception in ‘psychopaths’. Laurent’s interest in anger arose in the 1990s during the completion of undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Formal Logic at the Sorbonne in Paris. 


Ross G. Menzies has been providing cognitive-behaviour therapy for anxiety, depression, couples conflict and related issues for over two decades and is currently Associate Professor in Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. He is an active researcher and currently holds over $5 million in national competitive research grants. He has produced four books, over 140 international journal manuscripts and book chapters and is regularly invited to speak at conferences and leading universities and institutions around the world. He continues to attract patients from across metropolitan Sydney, rural NSW, interstate and from overseas, with many individuals and families travelling thousands of kilometres to receive treatment at his private practice. The present book is his first major work on anger.

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